


burn

by wistfulwatcher



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 03:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3473003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wistfulwatcher/pseuds/wistfulwatcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Not that Abby still hears it. Not that she can’t shake how Raven’s skin had tensed beneath her hands with every incision. Not that Abby can’t look at her without feeling the strangest combination of guilt and awe.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>a missing scene from reapercussions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn

“Abby?” Raven’s voice is rough, still broken from the screaming that hadn’t stopped through her entire surgery.

(Not that Abby still hears it. Not that she can’t shake how Raven’s skin had tensed beneath her hands with every incision. Not that Abby can’t look at her without feeling the strangest combination of guilt and awe.)

She licks her lips and squares her shoulders, tries to ignore the searing pain that radiates through her body with every step. The stale air of the camp is even too much on her exposed back, and she has to grit her teeth until she’s standing over Raven.

Abby forces herself to relax, and smiles down at her. She thinks about stroking Raven’s hair back, but the idea alone is tiring. “How are you doing?”

Raven looks up at her and her brows are furrowed deep. Abby’s weak smile falls. “Jackson told me what they did to you.”

“It’s nothing,” Abby says on reflex, and now she does rest her hand on Raven’s hair, stroking as much as she dares. Each movement is too much for her tight muscles, but Raven still looks confused. Worried, maybe?

“Abby, they shouldn’t have,” she starts to get up but she’s still so weak, and Abby pushes her shoulders back down gently.

“Really, I’m OK.” Raven doesn’t look satisfied, so Abby smiles down at her reassuringly. “They’ll heal.” She brushes her hair back again, tucks a bit behind her ear. “It’s sweet of you to worry.”

Raven smiles a little at that and winces as she resettles. “Don’t tell anyone, ‘K?” she jokes in that hoarse voice.

“I promise,” Abby says easily. She’s on edge all the time around camp, on the ground, since before they got to the ground. (She’s been on edge, been guarded, for a lot longer than that, really.)

But Raven is easy to be around. She doesn’t need to fake anything, doesn’t need to keep up her councilwoman neutrality (not that she a) is a councilwoman anymore or b) was very good at it to begin with). Besides, Raven sees through her alarmingly fast; there’s no point in faking anything around her.

It’s been a few days since Raven’s surgery, and she’s getting her color back a bit, her skin is no longer the pallid tone she was in the dropship that first day on the ground.

“Let me check your stitches,” Abby says softly, and pulls her hand back from Raven’s limp hair.

“I’m fine. You patched me up nice, doc.” Raven gives her a small smile, and doesn’t try to move. She gestures toward Abby with her chin a bit, though, and murmurs, “You’re the one who needs to be looked at.”

“Jackson did,” she not-quite-lies. He’d looked and tried to put the ointment on, but it hurt—still hurts—too much to stand much medicine.

“Sure,” Raven says with no belief, but this time she does move a bit, to her side so Abby can look at the bandage on her lower back.

The bandage that is half-soaked with blood. Abby’s eyes dart up and she leans back to look her in the eyes. “Raven, what happened?”

She helps her turn onto her stomach so she can take the bandage off, and beneath the cotton she can see the stitches have been pulled open on her left side. “I heard screaming.” Her words are defensive but she’s looking up at Abby out of the corner of her eye, her head tilted to the side on the table. Her glances are stilted, awkward, like she’s unsure and nervous and it’s sweet and thoughtful and far too caring all at once.

“I heard you screaming,” she adds, softer, and Abby tightens her jaw.

There’s something about Raven caring for her that makes her feel so warm, too warm. Abby’s seen her loyalty, seen her conviction, and the thought of Raven directing that toward her is. Well, it’s unsettling at the same time that she wants to wrap herself in the thought.

“I tried to get up but,” she cuts herself off like she’s ashamed, and Abby forces herself not to grimace as she lowers herself to the chair beside Raven’s bed.

Raven’s hand is resting beside her head, and Abby reaches out, curls her fingers over Raven’s palm, and squeezes as much as she can manage. “Thank you.” She means it, so much. She lost Callie weeks ago, Jake before that, and Thelonius is as good as gone, left behind in what remains of the Ark. And Clarke. She can’t think about Clarke.

Jackson remains her only friend—save for Kane, when she’s on his side—and as much as she loves him, he is not a fighter.

Raven is. And it feels amazing, really, knowing that this amazing girl tried to get out there to help her, to save her.

“Of course, Abby,” is all Raven says, and her words are simple but her eyes are serious, dark but wide with sincerity as they dart between Abby’s own.

When she pushes herself back up she can’t stop the wince. Raven must have noticed it, her head turned toward Abby, but she says nothing, just lets Abby start to sew her skin back together.

Raven is doing her best not to react but Abby is stabbing her with a needle over and over and so she hisses a little.

Her movements freeze instantly, and it’s the beginning of her surgery for a second, her telling Abby to stop and Abby pulling back instantly because she didn’t want to do it as badly as Raven didn’t want it done.

She’d been scared, too. It was her job and she was the best surgeon on the Ark, but cutting into her friend like that, with nothing to stop the pain, well, she knew what Raven was in for.

Was going through again, now. “I’m sorry,” she says when she can find her voice, trapped in the dark thoughts. “If we find the other pieces of the Ark, there might be anesthetic there,” she speaks as she finishes up with Raven’s back. Other than the single hiss, Raven just grits her teeth and breathes harder now.

No one should get better at this. No one should have practice.

“It’s fine,” Raven bites out, and Abby applies a fresh cotton pad, tapes it down. The skin around her incision is red, raw from the poor supplies and applications of tape and she runs the pads of her fingers around the cotton, slowly, as much as she can manage.

She wants to soothe her, to take away the pain she’s feeling right now. Same place, even.

Abby swallows and tries to ignore how her burn, her pain, is likely karma for the woman in front of her. The woman—barely more than a girl—she’d put on this path, sent down to earth in search of her own piece of mind.

It’s so convenient when what you want can masquerade as what is right.

“Abby?” She jerks her hand back, realizes she’s been stroking Raven’s back, lost in thought. She steps away and looks down at Raven and forces a smile as she tilts her head a bit.

Raven starts to turn, and Abby grits her teeth as she reaches up quickly to still her by the shoulders. “Raven, stop, you’ll pull them again.”

But she doesn’t stop, just slows, and looks up at Abby with those big, open, caring eyes that make Abby feel warm and too hot at the same time. “Raven,” she warns again, but she’s not going to listen, so Abby helps her up, guides her to sit on the edge of the bed, hand hovering over the bandage.

“Let me see yours now,” Raven says in that stubborn way she sometimes does, jaw clenched, looking up at her like she isn’t one big breeze from being knocked right back down.

And Abby’s close to her, too close, with her hand on her back pulling her to the edge. Raven’s legs are parted just the smallest bit from sitting up, her knees are bumping against Abby’s and Abby lets her hand fall away. Because it’s too much.

“Zero-g mechanic and doctor, now?” she tries to tease, and gives Raven a condescending kind of smirk that she’ll feel bad about later.

But Raven just gives her a smirk of her own and pops her chin up. “Turn around, Abby.”

“I’m fine,” she starts to reassure, but then Raven’s hands are on her waist and she’s pushing at her hips and Abby has to turn or she’ll tear her stitches again.

So she does. She only has to turn around, her burnt skin bared from the rip in her shirt, and she hears Raven suck in a breath. “Jesus, Abby,” she breathes, but it’s not pity in her voice. It’s something closer to hurt.

And then Raven’s fingertips are brushing the unmarred flesh just above her hip, and it’s her turn to inhale sharply.

Her skin is raw, her nerve endings are singing, and Raven’s touch is cold in a way that concerns her—she’d lost a lot of blood and she needs to replenish it, she’ll look into another transfusion—but that also feels too good.

She’s gentle, so so gentle for a girl as tough and ballsy as Raven is, and Abby feels tears stinging at her eyes.

“How many?”

Her jaw works once without sound, and she exhales through her nose, silently. “Ten.”

“Kane is an asshole. When we can have an election, once things are—”

Abby sets her hand gently on Raven’s resting on her side. Looks over her shoulder a little, but not enough to see her. “It’s OK, Raven. I broke the law and I—”

“That’s bullshit, the laws aren’t the same down here, they shouldn’t be. Everything is different here.”

She knows she agrees, but she can’t do this now, can’t argue about their lives on Earth because hers is, and will be, on hold until she has her daughter back. The politics will need to wait until then.

“I know, Raven,” is all she can offer now. Raven breathes out, frustrated, and there is a sudden pressure against the front of her hip bone that makes her mouth dry.

She doesn’t know if Raven’s doing it on purpose, if she’s so angry she’s curled her whole palm over Abby’s hip without realizing, but her touch is scalding, almost moreso than the shocklashes on her back.

Abby takes a sharp step forward, makes Raven’s hand fall from her body, and turns around. Sees Raven, sitting still, looking up at her with those wide eyes that are narrowed in that knowing way; that look that is so unnerving because Raven _understands so much._

The medical bay is hot—all warm, still air that Abby never imagined she’d experience—and she can feel her hair stick against the damp skin of her neck. But Raven looking up at her like that, it makes it even warmer, almost stifling, and when she shifts her legs she bumps against her knees again and realizes once more how close they are.

How when she takes the smallest step forward, she nudges Raven’s working knee away. Steps into the space between her legs. It’s sudden, the way she wants Raven to touch her skin again, the realization that her touch hadn’t hurt the way Jackson’s had, gentle as he is.

A breeze comes in through the open sides of the Ark, flutters her torn shirt and the loud tarp door, and Abby takes a step back.

She drops her hands from where they’d been reaching for the edge of the bed on either side of Raven, and clears her throat. Shakily brushes her hair back as she steps away, to the stool a foot behind her.

“Satisfied, doctor?” she tries, playfully, and raises her brows at Raven.

Raven narrows her eyes a little before starting to lay back down. Looks up at Abby and gives a weak smile. “Not in the slightest,” she smirks.

 


End file.
